Exclusive: On the defense-tech road with Jamie Dimon
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Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
REDONDO BEACH, California — The bus departed Impulse Space and was hurtling down the highway, bound for an In-N-Out Burger somewhere southeast. Inside, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and other executives were discussing defense tech: its ups, its downs, its risks, its opportunities.
- How could they help? Where were the relevant watering holes? And what would it mean to get creative, to avoid the pitfalls of the past?
- "The notion that this country is behind is frustrating, but I'm very uplifted by what they're doing," Dimon said. "You walk around companies like Impulse Space — they're doing amazing stuff."
The big picture: In October, JPMorgan Chase tossed $1.5 trillion into the national-security ring with its Security and Resiliency Initiative. At first a stateside push, it has since extended to include Canada, Europe and the U.K.
- Billions of dollars have already been committed. Billions more could be poured on top.
- "My real concerns started with the war in Ukraine in 2022," Dimon said, referencing a fight that has forced a rethink of weapons, tactics and global power.
- "Talking with some retired generals about the challenges really opened my eyes."
Driving the news: Axios tagged along with Dimon and crew last week as they toured Impulse, a space-mobility startup led by SpaceX's first employee, and talked with missile, drone and aircraft makers, energy specialists, manufacturers, and data whizzes.
- The back-to-back engagements were part of an annual bus tour, in which Dimon and other top bank execs consult with employees, clients and communities across the country.
- This year's trip was dedicated to California, starting in Healdsburg and zipping through San Francisco, Modesto, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. It wrapped in Orange County.
State of play: Defense was once a dirty word in some West Coast circles. Now, startups and neo-primes nestled around LAX and SFO are sinking their teeth into the Pentagon budget and boxing out older, more orthodox companies from the headlines.
- "Being a 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley, I've never seen this kind of effort, this manufacturing push. It's real. I can feel it," said John China, the co-leader of JPMorgan Chase's innovation economy practice.
- JPMorgan sponsored this year's NatSec100, an inventory of prominent private-capital-backed companies and their defense contracts. A dozen previous listees have IPO'd.
- "We have to be out here regularly," China said. "We have to be in front of these folks."
Zoom in: The Security and Resiliency Initiative is dedicated to critical industries such as aerospace and defense, manufacturing, energy and health tech.
- Its more than two dozen subcategories include battery storage, command and control, critical minerals, munitions, shipbuilding and space launch.
- And there are big names advising it: former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, retired Gens. Chris Cavoli and Paul Nakasone, and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan among them.
- "We're bringing our human capital and financial capital to help give oxygen to this important effort," said Doug Petno, a JPMorgan Chase co-president.
- "This couldn't be a symbolic gesture — it needed to be a meaningful commitment backed by visible, measurable action."
Threat level: Should the U.S. fail to kick its defense-industrial base into high gear, fail to excise Beijing from its most-sensitive stockpiles, fail to juggle the Asia-Pacific with the Middle East with the Arctic, it risks losing the next war.
The bottom line: "It looks like the engine behind the arsenal of democracy has been ignited, from nuclear energy to missile defense and shipbuilding to supply chains," Dimon said.
- "We're here to help. We're here to learn."
